Alex Turner – Submarine EP (Domino) 14/03/2011

Richard Ayoade found fame in ‘Garth Marenghi’, ‘The IT Crowd’ and ‘The Mighty Boosh’ and he can now safely add ‘Submarine’ to this list of achievements. The film is brilliant; hilarious, quirky and sentimental as is the soundtrack by Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys fame.

On the soundtrack, Turner has distanced himself from the energetic, northern indie music that shot him and the lads to fame over five years ago (seems longer, doesn’t it?). Instead, he’s opted for a delicate, acoustic theme. A theme which makes the film even more beautiful and, surprisingly, Alex’s voice lives up to it as he purrs his way through all six tracks.

There are, and obviously always will be, hints of his past. He’s still a 21st century story teller. Only this time, there’s no “Well how funny were that sketch earlier/Up at that taxi rank/Oh no you woulda missed it/Think it were when you went to the bank” nonsense. Oh no. He’s gone all sentimental on us and is now carefully crafting emotional vignettes: “I etched the face of a stop watch/On the back of a rain drop/And did a swap for the sand in an hourglass. ”